imagineImagining Maine features student work created in AM322J, “Imagining Maine,” offered at Colby College in January 2016. This work examines the ways that Maine was represented, both by its residents and visitors to the state, during the period 1820 to 1920. These dates mark a century that begins with the year in which Maine was granted independent statehood and ends at the time when Acadia became a national park. During this century, Maine was transformed in the national imagination from an apparently empty and uninhabited wilderness into a vacation spot. As this site demonstrates, Maine residents both accepted and struggled to redefine the image of their state—and along with it, their personal identities.